How to Survive When Your Business Partner Is Your Life Partner

A dream situation...if you know how to navigate it.

By
Stacie Cassarino

May 27, 2015

It could be said that starting a company and starting a marriage require the same basic things, foremost "an aligned vision." That's what Freya Estreller and Natasha Case (above, left and right) shared when they joined forces in ice cream and in love in 2009 to create Coolhaus, an "architecturally inspired gourmet desserts" company that now has a bicoastal following. They sell homemade ice creams with either straightforward flavor names like "Fried Chicken + Waffles," "Foie Gras PB&J," and "Brown Butter Candied Bacon," or ones named for famous architects, such as "Frank Behry" (sugar cookie with strawberry ice cream) and "Mintimalism" (double chocolate cookie with dirty mint chip).

I met up with them on the tennis court in Los Angeles to discuss how they've managed to launch a profitable company and a committed marriage without compromising either, and got a glimpse at some of the teamwork—and competitive spirit—that has inevitably led to their success, on and off the court.

After you first met, how did the romance begin, and where did the ice cream come in?

Freya: I was sort of feeling like exploring my sexuality for the first time [around the time I met her], and I thought, 'She can be my practice girlfriend.' When she e-mailed me after the party [where we met], I thought she was hitting on me but she wasn't.

Natasha: I was just a very enthusiastic e-mailer, lots of exclamation points. And so we e-mailed back and forth all day. And it was becoming more flirtatious.

Freya: It was becoming a thing. And then fast forward to our first date, literally the next day, and she brought over the ice cream and cookies and she was talking to me about it, 'I'm making all these ice creams and cookies and naming them after architects, like Richard Meier Lemon,' which is exactly the one she brought on our first date.

That sealed the deal?

Natasha: I didn't even think about it melting, so I showed up and it was a soup—but it was immediately part of our conversation, it was part of our romance, obviously. First date: the sandwiches were there.

Freya: So we immediately start dating and start talking about how to make Coolhaus. And it wasn't even named Coolhaus. It was just called Farchitecture: food + architecture.

So how did you actually launch your company?

Natasha: The event that we figured out would be great to get Coolhaus out there was Coachella. 100,000 people.

Freya: We were one of the first trucks they ever brought in to vend at Coachella and they put us in the campgrounds.

Natasha: But in those days you didn't have weekend passes, you had single day passes, so the campground was actually the only place where you really had a captive audience, so it was actually great. By the end of those five days we kind of had a mini cult following.

How do you complement each other in work—and in marriage?

Natasha: Well what's funny, and this is a really important point about being partners in business and in life, especially because you're going to be spending so much time together as, you know, a business companion and a romantic companion, so it's also parabolically learning more from each other than I think we even normally would as partners. What started to happen after four or five years was that people were like, Natasha is the one who gets it done, she's the bottom line washer; Freya's the visionary, the creative. We in fact learned so much from each other that I think Freya became much more visual, creative; that side of her got a lot more nurtured in the Coolhaus world, and I became a math nerd for accounting. I still have the creative base, but I think what's good is that your Venn diagrams start to overlap in an awesome way.

So your roles essentially shifted?

Natasha: I think also it's hard to tell, because some of it is also just maturing and becoming a more well-rounded person, and when you run a business in general, I mean, fast forward to when we took on our major investor who we still have now, and he said, 'Natasha you're the CEO, Freya you're the COO.' To be a good CEO you don't have to be doing all aspects of business, but you have to understand them and be able to ask the right questions or know when something doesn't look right.

Freya: And actually for me, what I've started to realize about myself, because I've never had a creative profession—my professions were real estate development, project management, finance—is that my creative output is starting businesses.

Natasha: Freya is like an incubator, an executor.

Freya: And then I realized, 'Oh, that's how I like expressing my creative self.'

Natasha: And the thing I'll say too that's important, the reason why Coolhaus worked, especially in the beginning, it was good that we had different skill sets but an aligned vision. And we just also had a fearlessness.

Fearlessness seems like an essential to making the leap into a relationship, too. How did your relationship—like your company—survive those early days?

Freya: Those first four years were a sprint and a marathon at the same time. We did not see our friends. I kind of don't even remember, it's all a blur.

Natasha: But…we were learning so much about each other, being forced to confront each other in this intense professional situation, and establishing the roles and the boundaries, or the lack thereof. Even though it could be exhausting to never have a break from it, it was very romantic and amazing, too. I also think that's why it grew so quickly, because we were always incubating and discussing and exploring and pushing each other.

Have there been challenges or tensions in the business world when people discover that you're romantically together?

Freya: No actually, we haven't experienced that yet.

Natasha: To be fair, we used to be quieter about it. But so much has changed, and for whatever period of time that was relegated to, I never even think of it anymore as something I wouldn't want to be proud of.

Freya: I would say the only thing we get is that no one ever believes or thinks we're the owners of the company initially.

Natasha: More because we're women though.

Freya: Yeah, maybe because we're women, but also because we're younger. And they never assume we're a couple.

Natasha: Never. It's not like they're being homophobic by doing that, but it's still not on the radar, it's still a hetero-normative world, too...But I feel like at this point, it's a plus. People are like, 'Oh my god that's so cute.' It wins people over more than anything else...And we do business with people who don't necessarily have the same views about gay marriage, let's put it that way.

What's been the greatest challenge in working together?

Natasha: Knowing whether to wear your 'wife' hat or 'business partner' hat at a particular moment...or both—often a given scenario could be dealt with from either point of view. Also, creating boundaries with work so that it doesn't spill into all personal time.

How about the most thrilling aspect?

Natasha: The romance and excitement of building a brand and a culture—and how quickly we were able to do it because we were always passionately hashing it out, discussing new flavors, debating who to hire, etc. Also, I have always loved traveling together for work... it never feels like work.

What's the most important thing you've learned about one another?

Natasha: How generous Freya's spirit is—one of her all-time favorite passions is mentoring and advising others (especially women) on entrepreneurship. She's the coolest.

How do you turn work off together? (Other than tennis.)

Natasha: You have to create definitive rules... and keep the phones out of arm's reach.

If you could offer any advice to people getting involved in business with their siblings, partners, spouses, or any significant others, what would it be?

Freya: I would say, definitely, first of all, you should go into business with a business partner, you should not do it by yourself. It's really hard to go it alone. And just make sure that you and your partner have complementary skill sets.

Natasha: But an aligned vision. And I think, too, preemptively create boundaries: Okay, one night a week we're going to go out and have fun together and not talk about business. You know, make sure you establish the relationship outside of that and work at it; it's so tempting to always go back in that direction.

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